Clark County History: Clark or Clarke?

Why Clark County once tagged an “e” on Clark and now doesn’t is curious, more so because the errant letter stubbornly clung like a cocklebur to a wool shirt for 70 years. Likewise, the county and city names were similarly unsettled after Congress in 1853 split the Oregon Country into two territories — Oregon and Washington.

Clark County’s namesake William Clark headed the Corps of Discovery mapping great swaths of the Louisiana Purchase. His signed documents tell the story. He never wrote his surname with a final “e.”

The Oregon Territory sent its first representative, Samuel Thurston, to U.S. Congress in 1848. The anti-British Thurston wrote the Donation Land Claim Act and worded it to assign the Hudson’s Bay Company land claim to the Oregon Territory. To the dismay of the British, the act passed in 1850. It awarded 640 acres to any married couple who’d occupy it for four years. Every family settling in Oregon land weakened the British claim.

Until 1849, much of the Washington Territory was one county, Vancouver County. It extended from the Columbia River to the Canadian border and from the Pacific into today’s Idaho and Montana. In 1849, the Oregon Territorial Legislature changed that, declaring “the name of the county of Vancouver be and hereby is changed to Clark.” From then, the Oregon Legislature seems to have consistently shunned that final “e.”

When Congress split Washington Territory from Oregon in 1853, it came dangerously close to being dubbed the Territory of Columbia. Fortunately, a Kentuckian representative, Richard Stanton, explained its potential confusion with the District of Columbia.

So how did the errant letter sneak onto the county’s name? Historian Edmond Meany, in his book “Origin of Washington Geographic Names,” claimed it an error. So, it’s likely a long-dead proofreader failed to strike the “e” because he thought it correct, was unaware of the Oregon Legislature’s and Clark’s spelling, or simply imagined the silent vowel added flourish to Clark’s surname.

Regardless, Washington’s new territorial Legislature was at least consistent, and so the “e” crept into legal documents. In its first session in 1854, the Legislature spelled the county’s name as Clarke. Even the county commissioners’ seal designed that year carried the flaw. From there, the weed of error spread through early newspapers, including The Columbian. So, it’s no wonder the same weed flourished locally, sticking like a burr.

The looming 1925 Fort Vancouver Centennial sparked the Washington Historical Society’s interest in the spelling. In 1923, Meany had predicted the misspelling was “too deeply imbedded in law, literature and custom to be completely corrected.” Yet Charles Hall, a state representative from Clark County, introduced a 1925 bill to drop the extra letter. It passed, lopping that final “e” from the county’s name for good.

Martin Middlewood is editor of the Clark County Historical Society Annual. Reach him at ClarkCoHist@gmail.com.